People for whom walking is painful or impossible often purchase a small three wheeled battery powered vehicle to increase their mobility. Such vehicles can easily be used inside the home or out of doors in the vicinity of the home, but they cannot travel over long distances and are illegal to operate on public highways. Accordingly, when the owner of such a vehicle wants to shop in a mall, visit a state fairground, or the like, it is necessary to transport the vehicle to its place of intended use. Owners of trucks or other vehicles can carry such small vehicles without using any special equipment, but owners of passenger vehicles such as cars, station wagons, vans, hatchbacks, pickup trucks and the like must purchase a vehicle carrier to transport the smaller vehicle.
Quite a few patents have been awarded on such carrying devices. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,705,448 to Mungons shows a three-wheeled vehicle carrier apparatus for connection to the rear of a motor vehicle. The carrier apparatus is pivotal from a horizontal plane to a vertical storage position. U.S. Pat. No. 4,741,660 to Kent includes a motorized lift mechanism.
If these and other devices are attached to the rear of station wagons, vans, hatchbacks and the like, they block the rear door so that it cannot be opened. The whole point of purchasing such vehicles, for many people, is to gain the cargo space provided thereby and to gain access to that space through the rear door of the vehicle, of course. If the rear door is rendered useless by the attachment of a vehicle carrier apparatus of the type currently commercially available, the investment in the station wagon is wasted to some extent.
Accordingly, there is a clear need for a three-wheeled vehicle carrier means attachable to the rear end of a passenger vehicle which does not adversely affect the utility and hence the value of the vehicle when attached thereto. This clear need has persisted for a number of years, but no machine designers have been able to produce such a carrier that allows free and unrestricted opening of a vehicle rear door when the carrier is operatively installed.
It is therefore indisputable that the prior art, when considered as a whole in accordance with the requirements of law, neither teaches nor suggests how the art could be improved and how the serious limitations thereof could be overcome.